What's Better Quality?

GearSecond

Alright, so me and a friend(as most of my stories start) were discussing plugging in our game consoles into TVs. And of course we talk about which cable is the highest quality. He throws the classic "I have an industry inside" type of comment. His friend, who does sometihng cable-related or works with sometihng that is related to cables somehow, claims that HDMI is there for convenience and that Component is better.

Now, I was trying to make sense of this, and can't find a clear answer. I know better than to check information sites, like Wikipedia, where I'll either find comparisons that don't tell me much or information on how they work, but with no specs to compare to.

So I'm sure someone here has the answer. I am planning on using 1080 or 1080i and wanted to know: HDMI cable or Component cables.

Obviously composite cables are out the question.

Bounty1Berry

It depends on the set. Some sets will only process a 1080p signal fed through HDMI; some will do so via component and HDMI.

The big difference:

HDMI is a digital signal which can (depending on your gear) carry the copy-protection scheme HDCP.

Component is an analogue signal.

Because the content industry is afraid of TEH INTERWEB PIRATEZZ, some content sources (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players) are unwilling to output at full-quality– or at all-- if the output path is digital but does not support HDCP. This does not affect component AFAICT.

However, they are also considering (but have yet to, apparently) limiting the quality of their output on analogue outputs in the future, and that WILL affect component.

So basically you get to pick how the movie industry bends you over.

Throes

HDMI is far superior to component. Component cables from my experience can only output a 1080i signal, and that's just video. HDMI can output a 1080p signal WITH High Definition audio.

Plus, HDMI provides a truer picture than Component.

And Bounty1Berry is correct, HDMI is a digital signal while Component is analog.

I'm hoping to get a DVI to HDMI cable for my computer so I can get Vista to use a resolution of 1920x1080 on my 42" 1080p TV. Right now I'm using the HDTV out on my GFX card via Component, and the picture quality looks like shit, also 1080i.

GearSecond

Alright…

Now I just need to overcome 2 problems.

My Xbox 260 doesn't have an HDMI port, my PS3 does, and my TV, although it has an HDMI slot, it doesn't support 1080p.

So I guess I'll be going with HDMI if possible.

Bounty1Berry

@Throes:

I'm hoping to get a DVI to HDMI cable for my computer so I can get Vista to use a resolution of 1920x1080 on my 42" 1080p TV. Right now I'm using the HDTV out on my GFX card via Component, and the picture quality looks like shit, also 1080i.

Is the panel 1920x1080 native resolution? From what I gather, just because it can accept a 1080p signal doesn't mean there's actually 1920x1080 pixels on the screen.

For example, the small LCD TV we have (26") will accept a 1080i signal happily, but scales it down to the 1366x768 pixels it actually has.

You can get VERY good signals over analogue. I used to run a CRT monitor which could display 2048x1536 at 75Hz refresh (that's well more than 1080p) just fine over an analogue VGA cable.